Living Toward Virtue

In Living toward Virtue, Paul Woodruff shows how we can set about living ethically through self-questioning, which enables us to avoid moral injury by getting clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it. Self-questioning also helps us recognize the limits of our knowledge and so to avoid the danger of self-righteousness. Using real-life examples, Woodruff shows how we can nurture our souls, enjoy a virtuous happiness, and avoid moral injury as much as possible.

This is in the spirit of Socrates, who urged everyone to commit to a lifelong activity of self-examination. By contrast, modern philosophers who follow Aristotle in ethics have mostly taught that living well depends on having virtues that are robust traits of character. Traits are not reliable in all situations, however, and they do not help us make hard decisions. Having a trait is no substitute for the activity we need to practice in order to live toward virtue.

Written for anyone interested in answers to ancient questions about how to live ethically, as well as those engaged with current debates, Living Toward Virtue represents the culmination of decades of scholarship by one of its most distinguished figures.